A new Apple patent reveals that the Cupertino-based company may be working on a sort of “smart dock” which works with the iPhone or iPad. The filing, titled “Smart dock for activating a voice recognition mode of a portable electronic device,” describes an advanced base station that could automatically activate the voice-recognition features without any physical interaction.

The smart dock would be constantly listening for a specific word or phrase, and act accordingly. It could feature physical controls or a touchscreen, but no processing power, relying on the iPhone or iPad for those sort of things. In addition, this dock rocks speakers, making it easy to enjoy music in the home.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this kind of device will ever find its way to the market or will rather keep the “work in progress” somewhere in Cupertino offices. It is, however, obvious that Apple wants to bring Siri assistance beyond phones and tablets. We’ll let you know if we hear something more on this…